During Google I/O today, out here in San Francisco, Google announced among many other things, that it is opening up a Google Latitude API.

Google Latitude is of course the company’s major component in the increasingly competitive location space. With the release of the API, its presence will be felt much more greatly throughout the mobile web. The company calls the API an "easy and safe way" to use Latitude location with any apps/services.

"Since launching Latitude, our team has been talking about all the cool things you could do with your continuously updated Latitude location," says Ana Ulin, a software engineer on the Google Mobile team. "While we’ve built some of our ideas, there are simply too many exciting ones for us to do alone. Instead, we wanted to  let you safely share your Latitude location with third parties who could create apps that do more with your location."

Some examples Ulin gives include thermostats that turn on and off automatically as you approach/drive away from your home, alerts for heavy traffic ahead of you on your driving route, credit card account alerts of potential fraud, and photo albums so your vacation photos appear on a map.

The Latitude API is certainly not the only thing Google is up to today in enhancing its presnece in the location space. The company also announced new Google Buzz APIs, and that "everything is geo-enabled."